


Nowhere Fast

by Regalli



Series: All You'll Ever Need to Know [1]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, M/M, also starring their emotional issues, lots of introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-02 05:20:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4047661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Regalli/pseuds/Regalli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Scientist is always (or in very extreme cases, usually) Fine.</p><p>A radio host does not have to always be fine.</p><p>Which is good, Carlos thinks, because Cecil certainly is not fine right now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nowhere Fast

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, so I'm still alive! Just had a major... last year was not good. And so I return, with my favorite dorky scientist and equally dorky, emotionally spent radio host dealing with a reunion that I suspect is more exhausting than anything else right now. 
> 
> A note: I haven't made it explicit here but Carlos is autistic (I honestly think this is canon because I get him SO MUCH ALL THE TIME) and there's allusions to some insecurities he has there with other people. Might continue, in which case I'll probably mention it more explicitly when Cecil's actually awake, but for now I'm just ready to have something in semi-finished state again.

Cecil is sleeping. 

Carlos doesn’t get tired often these days, the Desert Otherworld-slash-Dog Park maintains the same state he entered in for some reason and that includes greatly increased stamina. But he likes blanket nests, they’re warm and provide pressure and comfort when he gets stressed. So when he started making a definite base in the settlement, he made sure to take some discarded blankets and have a distinct space for nesting. It’s been his primary place to call Cecil (or at least, usually he goes there while calling Cecil,) and since Cecil came to visit it’s been his favorite spot.

Cecil is sleeping because he is Not Fine.

It hurts Carlos to admit this, because his boyfriend is so resilient he managed to survive a corporacratic dystopian regime for nine months as its primary target-slash-unwilling spokesman and he genuinely thought Cecil could survive anything, but Cecil is most assuredly not fine. The rings and wrinkles around his eyes have intensified in the last year, he’s lost weight and probably muscle, his hair has been greyish even during their vacation when it made several attempts at its usual fluorescents and pastels, and now he has two bloodstained cotton swabs taped over his ears from removing the silverfish. His cane is sitting by the doorway, which Carlos at least knew about from Tumblr (Cecil posted pictures of it over the summer, after he and Janice bedazzled it once it became clear he would need one for day-to-day use.) The StrexPet® incident left Cecil with a nasty injury on his leg and related joint pain that hadn’t cleared by Parade Day and his subsequent imprisonment, and while Carlos doesn’t know the details of what Strex did to him it appears to have permanently worsened Cecil’s chronic pain issues. Carlos sighs and pulls the blankets closer around Cecil, who’s snuggled into his chest and holding him as tight as possible. 

And that gives Carlos a deep, stinging, utterly gaping sense of guilt because he could have prevented this latest issue. Among the things Cecil had brought from the apartment were a bunch of cushions and pillows and blankets, which had given Carlos the idea that they could get the citizens on the roller coaster off until a proper break system was designed by having them jump to a padded safe zone, using sheets to break the fall. So he ran off and completely failed to notice Cecil was still hurting and kind of in shock from actually deciding to leave Night Vale – well, Night Vale proper, Carlos thinks, since they are in the Dog Park but Cecil thinks of it as somewhere else entirely – and came back to Cecil curled up into a ball and sobbing on the floor. When he asked what was wrong, Cecil just clung to him and whimpered for several minutes before he said that he’d been scared to be alone and what if he lost control again to whoever owns Lot 37 and he left Night Vale, he wanted to not live there anymore, and then it turned into another long sob and Carlos had had to reconstruct the blanket nest around them while trying to comfort his boyfriend as best as possible before Cecil fell asleep, asking Carlos to still be there when he woke up.

Carlos feels very, very guilty about that.

The one consolation is that Cecil is, for the time being, out of Night Vale. Not that Carlos has anything against Night Vale, really, apart from the fact that the constant interplay of what citizens must know and what they are not formally allowed to acknowledge knowing leads to a kind of coded nonverbal doublespeak Carlos can’t ever read, and that he doesn’t really have any friends there, and the Sheriff’s Secret Police once confiscated a jar of jelly while he was Scienceing it with no explanation or apology, and the tear gas, and the whole thing where most of the town is apparently secretly a secret agent, and of course the fact that his boyfriend was legally sold to an unknown bidder and has been used without his consciousness and despite saying several times he didn’t want to be forced to do this and put in danger and who knows what else…

Okay, maybe he DOES have some things against Night Vale. But it’s Cecil’s home and he tries so, so hard to like it, and it is EXTREMELY scientifically interesting and the cries of “Interloper!” are actually not that bad if you take them as a town greeting, he’s been called far worse, and this way if he gets shunned he knows it’s nothing about his personal failings at, well, being a person. And Cecil has friends that he’s SURE he’d get along with very well now that they’re all back and Cecil isn’t under Strex control and trying to limit targets, or totally emotionally spent from the effort of living, so there must be nice people there! And the pizza is good albeit weird-tasting but it means he doesn’t forget to eat as often as he did before, so that’s good too!

It’s just… Cecil’s been legally sold to an unknown bidder and that sale was still considered valid even after Strexcorp fell. Cecil has been used without his consciousness or consent, and even vocally against his consent. And no one’s helped him. The Sheriff’s Secret Police used tear gas on a park full of people for no apparent reason and Cecil is simply used to that. And so Carlos feels fairly sure that Night Vale is not a place Cecil should be in right now. Or depending on how things are, possibly ever. If he wants to go back, they can work with that, they were working with it for the last year. It’s just hard, knowing that your boyfriend is in pain and people are hurting him and not being able to do anything about it because Night Vale doesn’t want you anywhere but in the forbidden Dog Park.

Which is really cool, of course, and he’s had so much science to study, but… Cecil has needed so much cuddling in the last year and he hasn’t been able to do anything because even if those doors were still around they wouldn’t open for him. And now Cecil’s hurting so much and the cuddles aren’t enough and he doesn’t know how to help, he’s a Scientist not a psychologist or someone with interpersonal competence, and just… Cecil doesn’t really like Night Vale right now. Night Vale is hurting Cecil. Carlos has no particular attachment to Night Vale unconnected to Cecil and is living somewhere else. No problems, right?

Only Cecil’s so upset. And Carlos heard that Best Of broadcast, at least the parts that didn’t make Cecil start quivering and ask to go somewhere else anywhere else and shout that that never happened, he doesn’t remember that, so he knows Cecil has potentially been in Night Vale for a very, very long time. He guesses that’d hurt, leaving somewhere you felt like you belonged. He doesn’t really know, himself, he’s never really felt like he belonged anywhere except when he’s with Cecil. But Cecil, Cecil doesn’t just belong in Night Vale, his love for it exudes from him even when they’re just sitting at the breakfast table eating wheat-free toaster waffles before the coffee’s kicked in yet. Carlos has heard him murmur town factoids in his sleep. And so Carlos guesses it would feel weird, and scary and intensely wrong for Cecil to leave, to even think of leaving like this, but…

He didn’t think Cecil’s mental state was this fragile, is all. He cuddles in closer again, because he promised and Cecil won’t let go of him and anyway he wouldn’t dream of leaving after that, and tries to will himself to get some rest because he’ll probably need it once Cecil wakes up. They’re going to need to Talk about things. 

And he does sleep better with Cecil next to him, after all. He curls up around his boyfriend so there’s no chance of brainwashed leaving without waking him up in the process and settles into an uneasy doze.


End file.
